Sunburn
by eliseyes
Summary: When Eli stumbles upon a photo album dedicated to a girl named Skylar, he becomes determined to find out who she is- with the help of Clare. Embarking on a wild adventure, the two uncover secrets that ultimately make them choose between finding out who she is, or abandoning the idea altogether. But the question on Eli's mind stays the same: Who on earth is Skylar?
1. Chapter 1

It was a project; a project that had been assigned much to Eli's surprise, because he swore each time he stepped into Degrassi Community School, he would be attending a high school. Needless to say, the project seemed childish and unamusing, which in turn caused him to wait until the day before it was due to actually start it.

So when Eli arrived home that afternoon, he asked his parents where he could find family photographs. They did not hound him for a reason, as he thought they would, but instead told him there were boxes upon boxes of photo albums upstairs in the attic, so he trotted up there and set his backpack down before scouring through every large brown box labeled 'photos.'

The project seemed simple, really: write an essay about your family history and add a few photos here and there. It was nearing the end of Eli's senior year, and quite frankly he was not happy when the assignment outline had been passed around. But as he looked through numerous photo albums, he found amusement in the smallest of things. He had to admit that his mother and father's choice of style was still not up to par, but in the eighty's they were far from better.

It was then that Eli stumbled upon a small album dedicated to a person named Skylar. Her name was printed in black by a person with the neatest cursive the boy's green eyes had ever seen. He stared at it for a while, contemplating if he actually wanted to see what this cover was hiding, but chose to open it slowly, now faced with the first photograph.

A tiny baby with her small hands balled up by her cheeks, wailing with her eyes glued shut. This baby looked so fragile to Eli, and he guessed this was Skylar herself. She was beautiful with her porcelain skin and button nose, which oddly resembled his mother's—but he ignored that fact as he turned to the next photo.

An older man holding the same baby, though she is calm now and most likely fast asleep in his arms. The male has an undeniably fascinated look about him, as if he cannot believe he is holding this baby; that she is there in his presence, alive and breathing. This brings a smile to Eli while he turns the page to find a strikingly similar photograph, though this time with a female.

It is what Eli finds next that makes his heart flutter in his chest. Another man holding this baby, one that looked completely different from the first, but a lot like his father. He is grinning to the camera, cheeks red and forehead shining, but he looks happy. He looks completely joyful with his wide smile and tear stained cheeks as he holds this baby wrapped in pink. Eli is afraid of what he will find next but continues on anyway.

Now staring him right in the face is his mother; he is sure of it. Her blonde hair tied back tightly, cheeks the same red as the male he swore was his father. She looks overjoyed as she stares into the camera, lying in a hospital bed connected to a number of wires Eli lost track of. She was holding the same baby close to her chest protectively, and yet he did not understand why. Eli had no sister, no half-sister, no sort of relative even once or twice removed that he did not know about.

And by this time Eli has seen all he could handle for one day and shuts the album, the same name in black in his sight once again. As he reaches to place it in the box, he finds himself unable to let it go. He sits there for however long he chooses to, just looking at the name printed in black and reading it as many times as he can. Skylar. _Skylar. _He racks his brain for a woman named Skylar but his memory serves him no justice. Skylar. _Who on earth is Skylar? _

This question haunts him into the very next day, the small album practically burning a hole in his backpack as he frantically searches for Clare in the halls of Degrassi. He spots her at her locker, pushing past underclassmen to reach his girlfriend who turns to him during this commotion, smiling but obviously worried by his eagerness.

"Good morning to you too, Eli." she responds with a smile, though no reaction of the same sort comes to Eli. "What's the matter?"

"I want to show you something," he spits out fast, already in his backpack before his sentence is through. He pulls out the album and places it in Clare's waiting hands, to which she is puzzled by and looks to Eli for answers. "Open it." he states, and she does.

"Oh, how sweet!" Clare says while cooing at the baby. "Who is this?"

"I asked myself the same question." Clare turns puzzled again.

"You don't know who this is?" she asks, flipping past a few pictures before her eyes go wide. "That's your mother, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I thought that, too." he answers, coming to stand next to her so he too can look at the photo. "But it can't be her."

"Where did you find this?"

"Upstairs in my attic. I needed photos for that stupid project."

"Well, that has to be your mother." Clare is certain of this, and it is evident to Eli by the tone of her voice. "Why else would your parents have kept it?"

"I have no idea…" he trails off, really taking to heart what Clare is saying. She does have a point, but Eli still finds himself not fully sold on the idea.

"And she gave birth to that baby." Clare adds, and Eli's eyes all but pop out of the sockets. "She's lying in a hospital bed connected to an IV. Come on, Eli, connect the dots." she hands him the album and is slightly startled when the bell rings. "I have to go."

"Just promise you'll help me."

"Help you with what?" Eli takes one last look at the album before averting his eyes to Clare's blues.

"Help me find out who she is." and Clare is skeptical at first, unsure if even she wants to know the answers to this kind of question. But then it dawns on here that _this _is something hard hitting—almost like a story she could write about for a paper. It's every journalists dream to be asked to help on a job like this, and she always has a hard time telling Eli no, especially when he looks so dead set on the idea of finding this girl.

"Fine, I will help." she smiles, and he does too, before they share a small kiss and Clare is on her way, leaving Eli to stand in a deserted hallways alone asking himself the same question yet again.

_Who on earth is Skylar?_

**A/N: ****Hello, dear person reading this. All I can say is that this idea has haunted me for some time now, and I have finally found the time to put it into words and here it is, so of course feedback would be lovely! Thanks for reading! xx**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm sorry this is so delayed. I've been having writers block, and I was unsure where to go with this. Like, I know where I'm going, so I just gotta figure out how to get there; every writers problem! I also want to say thank you for the reviews, because they have been so sweet and it's nice to know people appreciate your work. As always, enjoy, and feel free to leave comments. If you would to ask me anything about the story in a more personal form of communication, please feel free to! There are links to my twitter and tumblr on my page. **

That afternoon Eli spent most of his hours in the attic again, searching through more photo albums to find _something_, but sadly he turned up with nothing. He then came to the conclusion that whomever Skylar was, her life went undocumented by his side of the family, which worried, angered, and stressed him all at once.

It was also hard for Eli to look at his parents in the eye anymore, which was something they took notice to. At the dinner table Eli would stay quiet, answering questions with little to no word use at all. It was not until his father asked if anything was wrong that Eli answered with his longest sentence to date:

"Everything's fine, Dad; don't worry."

That weekend was his breaking point, and Eli called Clare over while his parents hosted their usual morning radio show. The questions in his head kept swirling and if he did not find anything close to an answer he was sure he would explode—though Clare said he was greatly overreacting.

"Melodramatics is necessary right now, Clare." he retorted, making his way to the family shared computer. Clare had the small photo album in hand, unsure if she should open it without asking her boyfriend's permission first.

"Have you looked through all of the photos in here?" she questioned as Eli pulled up an internet browsing page. His eyebrows pinched together and then sprouted up, and he mumbled a few curse words under his breath.

"No, I haven't."

"Well, you should have." she ended with a giggle to seem lighthearted as she scanned the photos by eye quickly while Eli tried to find reasons why he had not touched said photo album since showing it to Clare in the hallway a few days before.

To be quite honest, it gave Eli the creeps. Some unknown, weird girl's photo album was stored up in the attic at the bottom of dusted boxes made it clear that it should not have been found. But what was even weirder was the fact that his parents were so calm about him going in the attic in the first place—to look for photos nonetheless. Had his mother and father really neglected the fact that he could have found this? Or even worse: had his parents forgotten it was even up there?

"Eli!" Clare cries, waking him from his trance so that he can turn to face her in his chair. Clare has turned to the last photo in the album, which looks pretty recent. The girl is fully grown now, and could even pass for a female Clare's own age. She is smiling, her right hand placed on her hip with all of the characteristics of a beautiful day behind her. She is dressed in a t-shirt and shredded jeans with sneakers; her hair pulled back tightly in a bun. A large and full tree was on her left with a tire swing that hangs limp from it. This girl, Skylar, she looks happy. But, not the happy you would be on a day to say basis, but the over exaggerated happy you get when someone points a camera at you and tells you to smile; it's never _real_, but _forced_. What catches Eli off guard are her emerald green eyes that match his to a T. He carefully takes the album for Clare's cold hands and slips the photo from its glossy restraints. As the light from the computer screen reflects onto the blank backside of the photo, he can see something is written on it. Again, Eli's eyes meet the neatest cursive he has ever seen, though this time there is more to read then just a name. "Skylar Emmett. 16 years old. August of 2012."

Eli hands everything back to Clare in a fuss and quickly types the word facerange into the search bar.

"You're going to look her up on facerange?!" the strawberry blonde cries again, but Eli does not answer as he hits enter.

Though Eli thought it would be an easy search, the two are left with hundreds of Skylar Emmett's to choose from; some of which do not even have decent profile pictures to look at.

They go page by page, ruling out girls with blonde hair and blue eyes, or girls with brown hair and brown eyes. Sometimes they will stumble upon a girl with green eyes, but she is not sixteen. But then again, neither of them have any clue what age she is now.

Clare tells Eli to give up once they have reached the seventh page of results. She says that tomorrow she will take him to the police station to see if they can find papers on the girl. She even jokes that if she is Eli's sister—which, he has never truly thought of, but he guesses she must be—that she will most likely have some sort of police record they can look up. The green eyed boy is just about to give in when of all people Clare tells him to stop before he closes the page out.

"That one!" she points to the girl who is second to last on the page. "That's her!"

"I don't think so…" Eli says, but clicks on her name just to humor Clare. The page is fully loaded within seconds and the first thing he goes to is pictures. The first one that comes up is quite artsy, a flower tucked behind her ear as she stares into the camera. Eli feels his heart skip a beat in his chest, then speed up to accommodate. This girl has the most powerful green eyes, and they are staring right back into his own. Clare is beside him with her hand over her mouth, and both are left utterly speechless. They look at the photo for a long time, silence surrounding them as they are engulfed with disbelief. Eli is the first to break with silence as he clears his throat.

"So, what now?" he thinks aloud, and Clare wonders if Eli is just ignorant or having a moment of sheer stupidity.

"Aren't you going to add her on facerange?" Eli is baffled by this, and quickly shakes his head.

"That's… _weird. _I mean, she probably doesn't even know who I am! Look, she's from New York! She's in a totally different country and probably has never even heard of me before." the boy is soon fully aware of his own fear and insecurities once he finishes speaking. "Oh, hell with it." he then says, requesting her friendship on the useless website.

The two leave the computer alone after that, Clare leaving once Eli's parents are home from work. The boy checks his page from time to time, wondering if the girl has accepted his friendship request, but it always turns out to be that no, she has not accepted it yet and no, she has not even updated her page since Eli requested. His parents start to wonder why Eli has taken to the computer so much recently, but any attempts to dig deeper into the mind of the boy and figure out why are foiled, and both his mother and father dismiss it after a few days.

It soon turns to day four since Eli has found Skylar's facerange profile, and once he gets home he skips going to the computer altogether. He drops his bag off by the steps and goes into the kitchen to grab a soda. He pops it open and heads to the living room, kicking his feet up and flipping through the channels on the TV before he finally gives up and turns it off, all the while his eyes flicking back and forth between the television screen and the computer monitor. Silence pokes and pins at him, his thoughts racing with the idea to just quickly check. He gets this feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he classifies it as weird. This feeling on the pit of his stomach is contorting his muscles and making his heart race, because for some reason, he thinks today will be different then all of the rest.

So finally Eli gives in to mystery and makes his way over, turning on the monitor and going through the usual routine of pulling up his internet browser and going to facerange.

Now usually there would be nothing, but on the top left corner of the screen is a red marker. This red marker has a little number one inside of it, and all too quickly he goes to click on it. The boy sucks in a deep breath and reads the words "Skylar Emmett has accepted your friend request." He smiles.

Before he can even react to this milestone, something else pops up in the bottom right hand of the screen; a message. Eli recognizes the small photograph and the name next to it, and he whispers the message to himself as a large grin pulls at his lips.

"You've found me."

And Eli could just about cry.

**A/N: Thanks for reading! xx **


End file.
